Departed Merafhe�s wry humour to be missed
Nnasaretha Kgamanyane | Thursday January 8, 2015 13:35
Indeed he was one of the great men to be remembered for his strong and sometimes sardonic sense of humor.
Below are some of the strong opinions, comments and ideas he contributed during his time in parliament. These were taken verbatim from the Hansard at the Parliament Annexe (library) yesterday.
“Mr Speaker, I am prepared to concede the point made by the Honourable Member that most of the crimes may go undetected but we have to look at the statistics, we must have to look at the statistics, we must have some factors. We cannot just find the bush and put a police station there just because we suspect that a crime might be committed in that area,” he said during his first parliamentary discussion. This was on November 13, 1989 in response to Member of Parliament (MP) for Kgalagadi Lesedi Mothibamele who had asked him if he could consider including a police station at Herefort in the Molopo farms, in the National Development Plan.
At the time, he was the Minister of Presidential Affairs and Public Administration. That comment made Mothibamele unhappy as his area had ben refered to as a bush. “Mr Speaker, we share the longest border with South Africa and Namibia, particularly in this part of the country which the Honourable Member refers to and I think it is a fact that if we are to establish a police station at every strategic point where we suspect that there might be some security problems, all our resources will have to go into this construction of police stations,” he added as other MPs tried to convince him to build a police station at Herefort.
“Mr Speaker, I do not consider it necessary to mention the owner of the white plane which distributed the Botswana Democratic Party campaign leaflets for the General elections held on October 1989, as his name has no relevance to the decision on this campaign strategy.
“It is sufficient to remind Honourable Member (referring to the late Maitshwarelo Dabutha of Gaborone North), as he has observed himself, that the plane was a commercial one on charter to the BDP to distribute the leaflets he identified correctly as those of the BDP. This was a campaign strategy adopted by the party to distribute the leaflets from the air.”
“The distribution of campaign leaflets was done by all political parties which contested, not only in the city of Gaborone but throughout the country. The only difference in such distribution could be the method employed.
Obviously BDP found the method they employed on the sixth of October 1989 the most convenient and quickest to reach out to the electorate in a bid to win elections.
“It would be wrong to assume that only leaflets distributed from the air would make the city untidy. There were those pinned to walls, to the doors of almost all public facilities, including fences and every lamp post within the city, which were continuously blown away by the wind and replaced with as much rapidity,” he said in defence of his party which was being accused of misusing government assets during that year’s election campaign.
In another incident, Merafhe who seemed to always be on the warpath with Dabutha was quoted, “Mr Speaker, it is quite obvious that the Honourable Member and I are not on the same wavelength.
“Obviously our concept of independence differs. In my view, once a man has been appointed and the law specifically says that he is completely not supposed to be influenced by anybody in the discharge of his functions, the law guarantees him the independence that he required to be able to carry out the functions of any assignment that may have been given to him.” The two were arguing about elections. As he was at times stubborn, he refused to repeat his statement saying, “it is wrong and you do not expect me to be misled. The position is very simple,” he told the house.
One of the comments not to be forgotten was the response to the motion on the use of national flags on ministers’ cars in 2001.
“Mr Speaker, the mover of the motion has made my task of replying to the debate extremely difficult because according to the motion, the mover seeks to address his concern about the security of ministers because if they fly flags in his opinion they will be exposed to danger.
“But in his debate he made no reference to this concern, which is reflected in the motion. I am not surprised, Mr Speaker, because I have been very, very suspicious right from the very beginning.
“I suspected that the whole purpose of the motion was to really provide the mover with the forum to tell us about what happened at Boatle rather than deal with matters of principle and concern.”
“I think the hounorable member is being malicious. I do not think he is genuinely concerned about the safety or the welfare of the ministers. In other words, one may ask, ‘Who is fooling who?’ I have a feeling that we are now dealing with a case of beware of the wolf in a sheep’s skin,” he added.